The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon recent­ly edi­to­ri­al­ized that the ​“death penal­ty isn’t work­ing,” and con­clud­ed ​“that the death penal­ty here is a point­less law. If we’re not going to apply this law, then get­ting rid of it would be the less expen­sive course.” The edi­to­r­i­al cit­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error, the arbi­trari­ness of apply­ing the pun­ish­ment to some dan­ger­ous offend­ers but not oth­ers, and the dif­fi­cul­ty of ever get­ting to an exe­cu­tion as rea­sons for end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The editorial follows:

Death penal­ty isn’t working

A group based in Portland wants to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Oregon. Maybe they would get more pub­lic atten­tion if we had the death penal­ty in fact as well as in law, and if there was an exe­cu­tion now and then.

Oregon vot­ers rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty twice in the last gen­er­a­tion. The 2nd time, in 1984, we did it right, and the courts did not strike down the law. 

Instead, the courts did some­thing else. They strung out the appeals so that in the 22 years since the vot­ers act­ed, not a sin­gle per­son con­demned to death has been exe­cut­ed if he did­n’t want to be.

The only 2 exe­cu­tions that did take place involved con­victs who refused to appeal their sen­tences beyond the manda­to­ry reviews by the state Supreme Court. They evi­dent­ly real­ized they were bet­ter off dead than spend­ing the rest of their lives in prison.

More than 30 men are on ​“death row” at the Oregon State Penitentiary. One of them has been there since 1991. No exe­cu­tions are fore­seen in the next 5 years.

It’s not as though we don’t have wor­thy can­di­dates for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Most (though not all) of the con­demned men have been con­vict­ed not just of aggra­vat­ed mur­der but oth­er crimes as well, rang­ing from assault and bur­glary to kid­nap­ping and rape.

But while these men deserve to die before their time, there are uncount­ed oth­ers in the prison sys­tem who deserve the same fate but are not get­ting it. Ward Weaver is just one exam­ple. He killed 2 girls in Oregon City in 2002. But then he avoid­ed any death sen­tence by plead­ing guilty to mur­der. Now we’re tak­ing care of him in prison, and will do so the rest of his natural life.

Besides the lack of even-hand­ed­ness, one of the oth­er argu­ments against the death penal­ty is that some­one may be con­vict­ed unjust­ly, and an exe­cu­tion in that case would irrepara­bly com­pound a mis­car­riage of jus­tice. Judging by the Oregon cas­es on death row, it has­n’t hap­pened here, but the possibility exists.

The way Oregon has been deal­ing with this statute — by show­ing no urgency at all in at least try­ing to expe­dite deci­sions on appeals — it is hard to avoid the con­clu­sion that the death penal­ty here is a point­less law. If we’re not going to apply this law, then get­ting rid of it would be the less expensive course. 

(Albany Democrat-Herald, Dec. 11, 2006). See New Voices and Editorials.

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